At the 12th Ministerial Conference (MC12) in June 2022, trade ministers representing the 164 member countries of the World Trade Organization (WTO) met for the first time in four years amid an ongoing global pandemic and geopolitical forces that threaten to pull the global economy into separate blocs. A new policy brief by Sandra Polaski, […]
By Rachel Thrasher, Veronika Wirtz and Warren Kaplan At the World Trade Organization’s (WTO) 12th Ministerial Conference from June 12-15 in Geneva, Switzerland, trade ministers and other senior officials will gather to discuss the future of the international trading system. Many members view this long-delayed conference as a sign of whether the WTO as an […]
By Amanda Brown The Spring 2022 Global Economic Governance Book Talk Series convened four distinguished scholars with recent books, spanning topics from oil politics and China’s escape from shock therapy, to the political economy of energy transitions and the globalization of patient capital. Stephen B. Kaplan opened the series with a discussion on the political […]
In 2021, the United Nations Committee on Development Policy adopted a resolution that Bangladesh would graduate from least developed country (LDC) status after a period of five years. As a result, Bangladesh will have to forego its exemption to intellectual property (IP) provisions of the World Trade Organization (WTO) by 2026. As an LDC, Bangladesh […]
By Zara C. Albright On Thursday, February 17, 2022 the Boston University Global Development Policy (GDP) Center hosted Dr. Stephen B. Kaplan, Associate Professor of Political Science and International Affairs at the George Washington University, to discuss his new book Globalizing Patient Capital: The Political Economy of Chinese Finance in the Americas. The webinar was […]
Intellectual property (IP) provisions in free trade agreements (FTAs) ensure protection for the creation or invention of artistic works and goods, the creation or invention of which sometimes required, as in the case of medicines, high sunk cost in the form of investment in research and development. However, this protection creates a monopoly market for […]
Veronika J. Wirtz, Warren A. Kaplan, and Kevin P. Gallagher The Hill, June 2019
Intellectual property rights (IPR) provisions have become a staple of modern free trade agreements since the 1995 Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS), which set minimum standards for IPR protection for World Trade Organization (WTO) members. TRIPS requires members to provide an intellectual property legal structure encompassing patents, trademarks, copyrights, other provisions […]
Price is one of the major barriers to access to medicines, leading to an increasing number of countries implementing generic medicines to promote medicines access as they move towards Universal Health Coverage. Successful uptake of generic medicines depends, in part, on ensuring that these products are interchangeable with reference products. Typically, bioequivalence certification is established […]
Intellectual property rights (IPR) provisions have become a staple of modern free trade agreements since the 1995 Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS), which set minimum standards for IPR protection for World Trade Organization (WTO) members. Many recent bilateral and multilateral trade agreements increase the scope and coverage of IPR provisions and […]